poetry Archives - Page 4 of 293

Raise the Roof!
by Anastasia Suen (Author) and Elwood H. Smith (Illustrator)

Booktalk: My brothers built homes and my husband is a architect, so home construction has been a part of my life for years. I used our old construction photographs to help me write this 97-word picture book poem.

When the book was being illustrated, the editor asked me if the illustrator could add a dog to the book. I said yes. (We had a dog, so it didn’t seem like an unusual request.) Imagine my surprise when the page proofs for Raise the Roof came and the dog was a builder, too!

A year after the book was published, it came out again (with another publisher) as a PreK literacy program book, making this former Kindergarten ESL teacher very happy!

It’s #ThrowbackThursday!
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Wired
by Anastasia Suen (Author) and Paul Carrick (Illustrator)

Booktalk: Be smart about power! Are you reading this by lamplight? That lamp is probably powered by electricity! But how does the electricity get to the lamp? You flip the “on” switch, which is connected to a cord that plugs onto an outlet that’s connected to a cable that’s made up of wires that are connected to wires outside that are all full of electrons zooming from a power plant into your house. . . Don’t worry! It only seems complicated.

Dynamic three-dimensional illustrations track electricity from its source at the power plant to its end point in your home. Back matter includes suggested websites and further reading, as well as electricity safety tips and a glossary and index of electrical terms.

I wrote this 53 word poem after seeing miles and miles of transmission towers on a drive from Los Angeles to San Francisco. The editor wanted more details about each step of the process, so there are prose sidebars as well.

This is another book that I sold and then revised over and over and over again for the editor. And just like Road Work Ahead, the revisions didn’t satisfy the first editor, so I got the book back and sold it to another publisher. The second editor also wanted the book revised, so 12 years passed between the first draft and the publication date! (And now it’s been in print longer than that — so all’s well that ends well.)